Talk:Scottish Gaelic phonology/Archive 1

Archive 1

Phonemes

Sure, we can carry on here. Pretty much a return to the old table. Instead of calling it Post-alveolar, we should merge that column with the palatal column and call it (Pre-)Palatal. The following need changing: tʃ, tʃʰ > tʲ, tʰʲ; c, cʰ > kʲ, kʰʲ; n̪ > n̪ˠ; ɫ̪ (possibly, for consistency) > l̪ˠ; r > rˠ; lʲ > ʎ; nʲ > ɲ; ŋʲ needs to be added; and (ð) in brackets as it's a rather radical allophone of ɾʲ. That puts it pretty much in line with the way they're currently described in Gaelic phonology. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:05, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

(Since you and I are using IPA symbols differently, I'm going to switch to the traditional descriptivists' symbols here for clarity.) I don't understand why you want to merge the postalveolar and palatal columns. Wouldn't that put t′ t′ʰ N′ ʃ and k′ k′ʰ ŋ′ x′ ɣ′ in the same column? And is ŋ′ really a phoneme anyway? Doesn't it only occur before k′? +Angr 19:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, merging the two was a suggestion. We can keep it separate just for d' t' ʃ g' k'. ŋ' is usually counted as a phoneme; the argument that it tends to have an audible release, closer to ŋ'k' equally applies to ŋ which you could say only occurs before k... Akerbeltz (talk) 20:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes; the sources that say ŋ′ is just an allophone of N′ also say that ŋ is just an allophone of N. Is this what you're thinking of?

Palatal
Prepalatal	Prevelar
tʲ, tʲʰ	kʲ, kʲʰ
ɲ	(ŋʲ)
ʃ	xʲ, ɣʲ
j
ʎ
ɾʲ

What sources are you using? I don't have anything scientific (as opposed to pedagogical) written in the past 20 years, and the only thing at all I have that uses IPA is Scottish Gaelic in Three Months (mentioned in the references of the article). +Angr 20:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

No, as I said before, it's the other way round, N' is an allophone of ŋ'. There's plenty scientific stuff, try The Gaelic of Leurbost (Oftedal), East Perthshire Gaelic (Ó Murchú), The Dialects of Skye and Ross-shire (Borgström), The Gaelic of Wester Ross (Wentworth), A Phonemic Analysis of Scottish Gaelic (Ternes)... If I may say so, given your lack of familiarity with these well-known Gaelic sources, I'm inclined to change things back to the way they're normally interpreted this side of the Irish sea. We can then continue this discussion at a later point? Akerbeltz (talk) 20:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I have all those except the Wentworth; I said I don't have anything written in the past 20 years. And none of the sources you mentioned (except possibly the Wentworth, which I don't have) uses ɲ ʎ for N' L', so I assumed you meant that more recent sources do use those symbols. And who says N' is an allophone of ŋ'? Ternes's nasal phonemes are just /m/, /n/, /ń/ (= N') and /N/. Ó Murchú's nasal phonemes are just /m/ and /n/. Borgstrøm treats ŋ' and N' as separate phonemes for Skye (where ŋ' does occur without a following k'), but not for Ross-shire or the Outer Hebrides (where his only nasal phonemes are /m n N N'/). Oftedal says explicitly (p. 123) that N' has the allophone ŋ' before k' (his g'). So who says that N' is the allophone of ŋ' rather than the other way around? Wentworth? +Angr 21:33, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Ga, sometimes I hate the fact I can't just say "because I say so" :b The N' L' etc spellings are simply celticist conventions agreed upon in the days before word processing could deal with IPA. You have to spend quite a lot of time reading all those books carefully to figure out what the phonetic value of those actually is. No two authors quite agree on the *spelling* conventions used, virtually each bickering about the shortcomings of the other systems. And the Irish use the symbols differently yet again. It makes reading these articles a pain. The only one that sheds any decent light onto Irish I've found to be Córas Fuaimeannan na Gaeilge, Siadhail/Wigger.

Anyway, for a narrow transcription in IPA in the last 20 years, try the Survey of Scottish Gaelic Dialects, 1994. It's just about the pinnacle of phonological description in Scottish Gaelic and it has ɲ and ʎ, alongside k and k' (for which read /kʰʲ/), /ç/ /ʝ/ and /j/ etc.

Regarding ng, without going to the others, you will see in the Survey that in words like fulaing, /ŋʲ/ is retained in some areas whereas in others it has become /ɲ/ /n/ /g'/ or /k'/. Given the spread and the historic nature of the Goidelic writing systems, I fail to see how you can argue that words like fulaing have underlying /N'/...

Besides you can't just lump together all the dialect descriptions like that, certain dialects had/have reduced the lnr inventory, in some cases down to 1. But we're not dealing with a specific dialect here but a broad, common ground description.

Ternes, incidentally, has recently brough out a new edition. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I certainly sympathize with wanting to say, "Because I say so" - it's the feeling I get when people question me about my treatment of Irish phonology. But the shoe's on the other foot now! Anyway, you and Borgstrøm have convinced me there are dialects where ŋ' is a separate phoneme from N'. So if we take out the parentheses around ŋʲ in the table and use:

Palatal
Prepalatal	Prevelar
tʲ, tʲʰ	kʲ, kʲʰ
ɲ	ŋʲ
ʃ	xʲ, ɣʲ
j
ʎ
ɾʲ

is that acceptable?

In the new edition of Ternes, does he still believe Applecross Gaelic is like Sanskrit in having four phonemically distinct phonation types, e.g. /p pʰ b bʰ/? I always thought that was one of the more laughable aspects of his book, and it made it difficult for me to take anything else he said seriously. As for Ó Siadhail & Wigger, I find it absurdly abstract. They try to derive all dialects' surface forms from a single underlying representation, as if children acquiring Donegal Irish somehow had access to forms of Connemara and Kerry Irish too. +Angr 07:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Almost...

Palatal
Prepalatal	Prevelar
tʲ, tʲʰ	kʲ, kʲʰ
ɲ	ŋʲ
ʃ	ç, ʝ, j
j
ʎ
ɾʲ

I agree that the Ó Siadhail/Wigger goes a little overboard on the theoretical side, what I meant was, they did a nice job of actually describing the phonetic features of the sounds of Irish as opposed to many other scientific Irish publications which simply continue the N N' n n' system.

As for Ternes, not sure, I've not had time to read the new edition for the most part, busy with a research project and my book on Gaelic pronunciation ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 10:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that j should be listed as both a fricative and an approximant. And we shouldn't use ç ʝ if we're using kʲ kʲʰ ŋʲ. If we're indicating the prevelars as velar consonant + ʲ (which isn't strictly accurate, but I know it's done), then we should be consistent about it. +Angr 11:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

On xʲ ɣʲ that's both outdated (virtually no modern author uses this ancient convention, including the Survey, Ó Maolalaigh, Black...) and - pardon me - feels silly. Velar stop + a glide is /kj/ not /kʲ/ which involves a forward shift of POA. I really don't see where you're coming from with this re-analysis of Gaelic phonemes, it might help if you explained? I really don't mind arguing the finer points of Gaelic phonology, on the contrary, but this discussion feels a bit pointless.

I didn't mean to leave /j/ in the same box as ç ʝ so please ignore that one. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

The point is that IPA has one column of symbols for palatal sounds: c ɟ ɲ ç ʝ ʎ j. In the IPA, these symbols aren't specified for representing the fronter, coronal-like prepalatals or the backer, velar-like postpalatals, and in most languages it doesn't matter. But for the Goidelic languages it does matter: we have to decide whether we're going to use these symbols for t′ d′ N′ s′ L′ or for k′ g′ ŋ′ x′ ɣ′, and once we've decided which series we're going to use the palatal symbols for, we have to use something else for the other series. If we decide to use ɲ ʎ for prepalatal N′ L′, then we cannot also use ç ʝ for postpalatal x′ ɣ′, because by definition, ç ʝ have the same place of articulation as ɲ ʎ. If the authors you mentioned do that - if they use ɲ ʎ to refer to one POA and ç ʝ to refer to a different POA, they're misusing IPA symbols and misleading their readers, and I don't see that we should be required to follow suit and mislead our readers. As for kʲ, strictly speaking it doesn't imply a forward shift of POA (that would be k̟) but rather a stop with a pure velar primary POA and a simultaneous raising of the front of the tongue toward the [i] position. But I know that kʲ is often used to mean k̟, and since the sound kʲ actually represents is probably virtually nonexistent, using it to mean k̟ isn't a big deal. But since k′, ŋ′, and x′ have the same POA, it makes no sense to transcribe two as palatalized velars and the third as a palatal. Either we transcribe all three as palatalized velars, or we transcribe all three as palatals. +Angr 20:19, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, now I see where you're coming from but I think (now) you're missing the point. That table (as with many other languages) lists the Gaelic phonemes. Which means there's a rather large amount of leeway, as there always is with the IPA. Short of going into numerical notation and stuff like that, that's always going to be there. For the purposes of describing the phonemes, having ç ʎ ɲ etc in the same description is not a problem. Put in a note by all means stating that some are pre-palatal and some post etc but beyond that, we don't need to be holier than the pope. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm still not happy about it, especially since this makes our transcription of Scottish Gaelic noticeably different from our transcription of Irish, even though the sounds in question are not significantly different in their place of articulation, but that's the consequence of the sources we're using for the two languages. So, I'll change the article to reflect your preferred version. Now to the dentals: you said yourself on my talk page that velarization is not as salient in SG as in Irish, so why do you want to change n̪ to n̪ˠ and r to rˠ? +Angr 20:13, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not as salient except in lnr :) Akerbeltz (talk) 21:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks good now. I'll have to go through the page to sort out a few consistency issues and a couple of errors I spotted (nobody uses lochán for example). I'll try and do that this weekend. Akerbeltz (talk) 06:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Consonants part 2

Sorry about the recent contentious editing. There are some questions I have about the representation of consonant phonemes for Scottish Gaelic:

• Would it be appropriate to represent the unaspirated stops with the voiced stop characters? It seems that Scottish Gaelic has a fortis/lenis contrast very similar to north germanic languages (and, other than preaspiration, is very similar to English's)
• Are the dental markers important? It doesn't seem contrastive in itself.
• Are /n l ɾ/ broad or slender? If we're going to represent the contrast by marking slender consonants as palatalized and broad consonants as unmarked, then we should be consistent.
• On that note, we should also be consistent with the dorsal series. Either we use superscript j on all four or on none of them.
• The lenition table mentions slender labials but the consonant table doesn't. Why?

Keep in mind that I plan on going through all the pages that use link to WP:IPA for Scottish Gaelic to normalize transcription, so our discussion has implications on more than just this article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:47, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm all in favour of normalising Gaelic IPA to a standard (I just can't watch all pages) but it needs to be done properly, as I'm sure you'll appreciate. Now for your questions-

• The contrast is between aspirated and non-aspirated, if we used /b d̪ g/ to represent /p t̪ k/ it creates problems at various levels. For one, it gives the impression that Gaelic maintains the same distinctions as Irish. It also creates problems with pre-aspiration because we'd end up with sequences like /ʰb/ that - well, just look wrong and if anyone uses them to pronounce it, they get the wrong thing. It also creates a problem with the sandhi phenomena around so-called nasalisation and voicing as we'd suddenly be a symbol short.
• Dental is importan as it is a feature lost in lenition and also is a main factor in various phonotactic rules such as blocked lenition.
• n l r sounds are not that easily explained in relation to broad and slender but I'll do my best. Historically there is the broad series /n̪ˠ nˠ lˠ̪ lˠ rˠ ɾ/ and the slender series /ɲ n ʎ l *r ɾʲ/ but the problem is that through a series of historical changes some of these can be either broad or slender depending on the vocalic environment etc. I think here we need to separate orthographic issues and ponological issues. Phonologically, broad and slender is not really a relevant category. The only relevant category here is one of strength and pairing (which plays into lenition). Orthographically we can give the broad picture stating that slender l n r usually correspond to /ʎ l ɲ n rˠ ɾʲ/ and broad to /n̪ˠ lˠ̪ rˠ ɾ/ but keep the two issues separate.
• slender labials - remember "slender" is an orthographic categorisation (i.e. that in the normal spelling these are surrounded by e/i). The orthography still marks slender labials but in most environments there is no phonetic contrast anymore. The only instance of a contrast is when an orthographically slender labial is followed by a back vowel (that used to be in that table, or at least it's in the page on Lenition) then a glide is present. But the labials are never palatal(ised) the way they are in Irish.

Make more sense now? Akerbeltz (talk) 22:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Just had a look - the most obvious erros on the Wikipedia:IPA for Scottish Gaelic page are that they don't list the palatal counterparts for /b pʰ m f v h/ before back vowels (/bj pʰj mj fj vj hj/) but that's easily sorted. The most reliable list seems to be the one on Lenition - except that it missed the /lˠ̪/ which cannot be lenited anymore except in Harris Gaelic. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:07, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: From this point on, I'll be using velarized and palatalized instead of broad and slender.

I guess I worded that strangely. What I meant was that the sound of ball be represented by [b] and that of poll by [pʰ]. That shouldn't be a factor in representing preaspiration.

I may be making assumptions from my conversation with Angr about Irish, but it seems like right now we represent /m pʰ p t̪ʰ t̪ kʰ k f v s̪ ɾ/ without a velarization diacritic even though they're pronounced with velarization. If this is correct, then it's misleading to use the diacritic for /n̪ˠ lˠ̪/ rˠ; we may want to instead represent the latter trio as /n̪ l̪ r/. If /n l ɾ/ don't have any velarization, we can simply make a note of that somewhere. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes you are bringing Irish into this ;) Gaelic does not have a velarised-palatalised pairing in the clean, Irish sense any more. Only lnr exhibit velarisation in Gaelic. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

And the lenition table is now wrong - /lˠ̪/ has no lenited counterpart and /rˠ/ never lenites to /ɾʲ/ Akerbeltz (talk) 00:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Part of the reason I thought that SG was similar was because the article led me to believe so. I've edited it according to what you've said. I don't understand what you mean that /rˠ/ never lenites to /ɾʲ/, looking back, I can't tell how I'm translating the table incorrectly. Perhaps you could fix it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:38, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, done, it all looks kosher now but I'll go away for an hour and look it over again. There's a number of things we should fix before we go away and blitz transcriptions for ScG in general (incidentally, how does one find all pages that use transcriptions for ScG?):

• we should agree to use eith [ ] or / /. I admit to being untidy about that myself.
• the data on phonology and orthography needs separating better - at the moment the phonology section starts with a discussion of diacritics...
• I'm in two minds if the phoneme table needs the glide adding because in initial position one can get either /ʝ/ (as a result of lenited slender gh or dh) or /j/ (before certain vowel combinations)
• could we split the lenition table into two that sit side by side, one for broad and one for slender? The current layout messes with my brain every time I look at it

Akerbeltz (talk) 09:22, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought Scottish Gaelic was one of the few languages known to have /j/ and /ʝ/ as separate phonemes. +Angr 09:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I would say so too but I've never run this past a "modern" phonetician. I'm quite happy to add it, the reason I mentioned it is because it's currently not in the list. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

As ever, it comes down to what the sources say. In East Perthshire Gaelic, Máirtín Ó Murchú does consider them separate phonemes and gives the minimal pair /jɑnːsɪç/ ionnsaich ~ /ʝɑnːsɪç/ dh'ionnsaich, though people might be more convinced of their status as separate phonemes if there were minimal pairs that weren't morphologically related to each other. But there are near-minimal pairs like earb ~ dhearbh/dhearg and earrach ~ ghearradh. +Angr 10:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah I forgot about Ó Murchú... Oftedal also lists them as two phonemes for Lewis Gaelic, should be good enough for inclusion here. Could someone else do that though? I'm nigh useless with wiki tables. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:33, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

There are unrelated minimal pairs, for example iùthaidh /juː.ɪ/ "(his) quality" and a dhiùbhaidh /ʝuː.ɪ/ (n. ) "his refuse" would be one. I could probably find a few more if needs be. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:44, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've added /j/ to the table. Last June, you changed /tʃ tʃʰ/ to /tʲ tʲʰ/ on the grounds that they aren't always affricates, but still they are very often affricates, so the affricate realizations ought to be discussed in the text. +Angr 11:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, there's a lot of allophones that need discussing. I'll try and steal some time. The whole page is really just a stub. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Started adding some allophones. I'll actually try and create some maps to make it easier to see but that will take me some time as I'll need to map SSGD onto a map of Scotland. What else would you say is urgently needed for now? Akerbeltz (talk) 23:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Now I'm confused about the rhotics. The lenition table doesn't mention [ɾʲ] at all where it formerly did. Is that intentional?

I'll go through and make changes in regard to use of brackets and slashes. It really depends on context but you should be able to look through it and agree/disagree.

I'm by no means an expert in celtic languages, but I'm of the persuasion that phonemic contrasts shouldn't consider morphology (it is, after all, the phonemic contrasts that indicate the morphology). Seeing as lenition is a morphological process, I'm okay with mentioning consonants that only occur with lenition. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 07:24, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

[ɾʲ] should never have been in the table. Only fortis consonants can be lenited and [ɾ ɾʲ l n] are lenis; i.e. they (as a rule) may not occur in initial position so they cannot undergo lenition. The loss of certain coronals such as fortis *R' (which would have lenited to [ɾʲ]) and lenis [lˠ] has led to some asymmetric mappins between unlenited and lenited. I'll cook up a Gaelic version of the coronals table that Irish phonology has, hopefully that will make it clearer. I'm probably being dim but where did we bring morphology into it? Akerbeltz (talk) 11:03, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't lenition a morphological process? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

That's a somewhat controversial issue. I have argued extensively in print that it is, but others say it's a phonological process whose environment happens to be defined morphosyntactically rather than phonologically. +Angr 20:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, if anything, we can put consonants that only appear from lenition in parentheses. That's similar to the vowel table at Russian phonology which has the vowel of ы but marks it to reflect scholarly dispute. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

schwa?

There are lots of articles where [ɘ] is a typo for [ə], but every once in a while I find a place where it's intended. Since the vowels in the words I just changed are not covered in the vowel charts, I didn't know which way to go here. Please revert me if I got it wrong. kwami (talk) 06:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

You got it right. But the [ɘ] for word-final ae in Old Irish is intentional. +Angr 08:46, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Original research vs citations for phonetic transcriptions of real words

This article is lacking in citations for (presumably close) phonetic transcriptions given. One example being the placename Mallaig given as [ˈmal̪ˠakʲ]. I live here, in fact am looking over towards Mallaig as I write this, but have yet to hear a Gaelic speaker say [ˈmal̪ˠakʲ], the reality being [ˈmal̪ˠεkʲ]. As a second example, the Gaelic close transcription of the Taigh an Droma has a final schwa. The dialects of the area can be expected to be final-vowel-dropping, so a citation ought to be given for this surprising assertion.

I think the article is refreshing in that it does not duck the challenges of close phonetic transcription as do so many publications. What do you think is the best way forward?CecilWard (talk) 13:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The best way forward is to find published sources for the transcriptions we use. The sources don't have to use the exact same transcription system we do, as long as converting is straightforward. (For example, many sources use /b/ and /p/ for what we call /p/ and /pʰ/ respectively; in such a case, just convert the source's system to ours.) +Angr 13:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a problem here though. Most published sources deal exclusively with specific dialects and to date, nothing that gives IPA for a broader "common/standard Gaelic pronunciation". Most of the Gaelic IPA is probably by me based on years of working in the field and working out what could be considered as mid-ground forms, following the general pattern of Gaelic text to phoneme rules etc. That aside, there is no comprehensive list of IPA transcriptions for Gaelic placenames so I think for now we're stuck with what in the strictest sense is OR.

I'm not everse to tweaking, however. The [εkʲ] is Mallaig is a likely variant and does not violate the general pattern so I'd be happy to change that, if /ε/ reflects the local pronunciation better. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't say that no Gaelic speaker says [ˈmal̪ˠakʲ], just that I've never heard such a pronunciation in Gaelic conversation, even though I have live in the area. Unless I'm very wrong, this is of course a Norse "-vik" placename, so is only to be expected to fall into the same class as Ostaig, not to be confused with native "-aig(e)" forms derived from a base -ag < /-a:k/ diminutive suffix. This is nitpicking in the face of excellent work.CecilWard (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! And I don't mind a constructive nitpick at all ;) I'll change Mallaig to /ε/ Akerbeltz (talk) 18:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

'Hebridean' Gaelic

I feel that we should add the qualifier "Hebridean" in certain places, seeing as, quite rightly, the article uses symbols [p], [t], [k] etc for orthographic {b}, {d}, {g}. For a substantial number of now extremely poorly represented mainland dialects, these historically voiced stops are still firmly just that. (Example: the North Sutherland speaker featured on the BBC TV program "A' dol dhachaigh".) What do you think?CecilWard (talk) 13:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Or we just say at the top, "transcriptions reflect Hebridean dialects unless otherwise noted", since the Hebridean dialects are the best studied and documented. Where mainland dialects differ, as in the case you noted, the deviation from Hebridean can be noted and discussed. +Angr 13:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The occurance of voiced /bdg/ is due to morphophonemic changes caused by preceding nasals etc and we don't have to account for that. After all, we don't state for English IPA that there are divergent dialects that may have other allophones. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I should have given the aspirated forms above, my mistake. Just to check my understanding, this is Ternes' system you're referring to? Where he has a complete set of voiced-unvoiced+aspirated-unaspirated but only by virtue of nasalization? I meant that we are not using a system where the IPA symbols bdg are used always with the "voicless" diacritic where non-aspirated. The North Sutherland speaker referred to earlier has [k^we:d] ("coimhead") for example, but I believe the article is using the best choice of symbols now. If mainland dialects should be mentioned, then we aren't going to have any problems because of choices already made.CecilWard (talk) 17:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Incomplete references

Gillies, Ternes, and Dorian are not listed in the references. +Angr 20:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't prioritising the refs for now due to a lack of time and given the fact we were debating (missing) content but will add and ref at some point. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Preaspiration

The reason I based preaspiration on orthographic ctp rather than the phonetic forms is that one invariably has to refer to the spelling anyway in the case of "slender p". Also, the way it's worded now is wrong on two counts: ([h] or [ç] (before /tʲʰ kʲʰ/ and "slender" /p/) and [x] (before /t̪ʰ kʰ/ and "broad" /p/) 1) dialects with /h/ have /h/ before both broad and slender; the /x/ ~ /ç/ alternation only appears if a dialect actually has /xk/ etc. 2) if preaspiration happens, the stops loose the postaspiration so if we say it occurs before /kʰ/ etc, that suggests /hkʰ/ which isn't the case... there's usually reason in my madness ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I was worried about that. Has my recent reword fixed that? I'm not a fan of using orthography to talk about phonology. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Made a minor change. I agree, ideally we'd be able to keep the orthography out of it but that would be a real pain here. At least i can't think of a good way of going from cipean to /kʰiçpan/ without invoking orthography or some really deep stuff. I guess you could come at it from the historical perspective and state that historical /kʰipʲʰanˠ/ results in /kʰiçpan/ but that's just so far removed from reality that I think it would confused most people. Shall we try and keep orthography out of it as much as sensible but compromise on those bits where it's just so much clearer if we make a reference to it? Akerbeltz (talk) 01:27, 5 March 2010 (UTC)